RON COSPER: Tactics, weaponry helped Kickapoo hold off Texans

SAN ANGELO, Texas - Eight miles southeast of Mertzon, on private land along Dove Creek, a Texas historical marker erected in 1963 reads: "Around this mountain a battle was fought on Jan. 8, 1865, between 2000 Indians and Texas Rangers and State Troops. Four officers and 22 of their men lie in unmarked graves nearby."

The site is little changed. The land looks much as it did on that snowy January day 145 years ago. On cold, dark winter days, visitors to this lonely place can feel the sadness. Spirits walk here.

According to some reports, when the Texan troops encountered an Indian encampment in the vicinity of Dove Creek, the Indians sent a delegation of one unarmed brave, a squaw and two children under a white flag to parlay with the soldiers. The brave and the squaw were shot dead and the two children taken captive.

It was thought these Indians camped along Dove Creek were Lipan Apache or Kiowa or even the feared Comanche. They were not. They were Kickapoo, a progressive and usually peaceable tribe.

The Kickapoo were latecomers to the Southwest. Before the arrival of the Europeans, they lived in the North Country, in the vicinity of the Great Lakes and in the surrounding boreal forests. They were forest people and they were farmers, hunters and trappers.

The Kickapoo spoke the Algonquin tongue and were aligned with and related to the Sauk, the Fox and the Shawnee. Around 1750, migration pressures squeezed the Kickapoo out of their homeland, sending them south to the prairies of what is now Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas and on into Mexico.

In January 1865, the Civil War was coming to a close. The South was asundered and defeated. Texas, spared from much of the Civil War's carnage, was drained nonetheless.

On April 9, 1865, the short-lived Confederacy surrendered to the Union forces. Fear was in the air and nerves on edge: early 1865 was not a good time for groups of Indians, any Indians, to travel the western frontiers of Texas.

In December 1864, evidence of a large group of Indians moving south through Texas was first discovered about 30 miles from the ruins of old Fort Phantom Hill, up the Clear Fork of the Brazos River.

With most military forces in Texas shifted to the east and into the south, the warlike tribes, particularly Comanches and Kiowas, took advantage of the lessened security and began a series of incursions and confrontations along the Texas frontier that lasted throughout the Civil War and into the next decade.

A Texas militia was established to police the frontier and members of this militia were exempt from conscription into the regular Confederate Army. It was the militia that first noticed the movement of a large group of Indians along the Clear Fork of the Brazos headed southwest.

The varied Kickapoo nation had fought with both the North and the South during the Civil War, where they learned rudimentary battlefield strategy and tactics.

But they grew weary of the war and about 400 to 800 Kansas Kickapoo packed up and headed south to join their brethren in Mexico where, in 1852, a group of Kickapoo had established a colony just south of Eagle Pass in Mexico. This peaceful migration was to be anything but peaceful.

Regular Confederate troops under Capt. Henry Fossett waited impatiently at Fort Chadbourne for the militia of 325 men commanded by Captain S.S. Totten. The militia failed to rendezvous and Fossett struck the Indians' trail without the irregulars.

Fossett and his 161 soldiers followed a broad trail to the North Concho River and beyond. Four days later, his scouts discovered an Indian encampment that stretched nearly one half mile along the banks of Dove Creek.

In those times and circumstances, any Indian was considered hostile. And so it was on that dark, winter day back in 1865.

Before sunup on the morning of Jan. 8, just before the Confederate regulars were about to strike the Indian camp and after more than 24 hours in the saddle, Totten and his troops finally arrived and joined forces with Fossett.

These militia troopers and their mounts were exhausted but, for the sake of surprise, a hasty battle plan was drawn up and immediately put into action. The Texan objective was simple: Kill as many Indians as possible, men, women or children, and capture or kill their horses.

The Texans had learned in fighting the Comanche and Kiowa over the years that the best tactic usually was a direct, robust frontal attack. Almost always, the Indians would scatter and flee. Not so with these Kickapoo.

It was agreed that the militia with its 325 troops would make the direct attack from the north, while Fossett and his professional soldiers would circle to the south of the Indians, capture their horses and then strike the Kickapoo as they scattered and ran, an old cavalry maneuver known as "hammer and anvil."

The Kickapoo were firmly entrenched on the high ground, hidden and protected by rocks, cedar shrub and other thick brush. Their field of fire was excellent. The militia, in attacking, had to dismount to cross the stream and when they did they were met with withering rifle fire from the heights.

The Kickapoo were able to maintain continuous fire with sophisticated synchronized load and reload while the Texans tended to fire all at once, instantly losing fire while they all reloaded. The Kickapoo's weaponry was at least as good as the Texans' and probably better.

Almost at once, the militiamen were stopped and quickly routed. Three officers and 16 enlisted men were shot in the opening minutes. Most of the militia retreated and many fled the battleground. The Kickapoo did not scatter and run as anticipated.

Meanwhile, to the south, Fossett and his regulars captured the Indian horses as planned but the Kickapoo quickly shifted their resources in this direction and immediately engaged the Confederate soldiers in a fierce skirmish that lasted hours.

Midafternoon, the sky grew even darker and heavy snowfall began. By nightfall, the Indians had recaptured their horses and continued to inflict casualties. The Confederates retreated three miles away to join Totten's militiamen, who were tending their wounded along Spring Creek.

The battered Texans spent a miserable night as the temperature dropped and heavy snow continued to fall. The official casualty count at that time was 22 dead and 19 wounded but, as many of the militia had fled, the extent of their casualties was unknown.

Dragging their wounded on makeshift litters behind their horses, the Texans slowly moved eastward and found shelter and food at John S. Chishum's ranch near the confluence of the Concho and the Colorado.

After their attackers were gone, the Kickapoo quickly left Dove Creek and made their way to the Rio Grande and into Mexico where they are to this day. Indian casualties were 14 dead, two of whom died in Mexico.

At best, it was a stalemate for the Texans, but most historians consider it a clear-cut Indian victory. And in the small-town of Sherwood, not far from Dove Creek, when it is a cold January afternoon and the sky is overcast and it is snowing, some say the spirits return to this sacred place.

It is said the distant muffled sound of gunshots can be heard. Sometimes these shots are loud but usually they are barely audible and they come and go with the wind and they differ in tone, as if of different caliber and gauge. But, with sundown, all is quiet.